


Outside Looking In

by orphan_account



Category: due South
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Marriage, Marriage Equality, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-01
Updated: 2012-09-01
Packaged: 2017-11-13 07:33:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/501022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fraser and Ray are standing on the borderline, outside looking in.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Outside Looking In

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hazelwho](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hazelwho/gifts).



> I wrote this to honor a challenge for the song "Outside Looking In" by Mary Chapin Carpenter (all the MCC fans in the house say "Woo!"). Pairing: Fraser/Kowalski. Prompt: "It's the hardest kind of need that never knows a reason" (it's a lyric from the song). I've sprinkled paraphrased lyrics from that song throughout the story.
> 
> I am 99.9% sure this is not what Hazelwho had in mind when she gave me this pairing/prompt, but this is where the song and my thoughts led me.

Benton Fraser has never been married. He’s not even sure what a successful marriage would look like. His mother died young, and his father was aggressive in his absence. His grandparents seemed admirably tolerant of one another; Fraser would rather like to have that one day, but first he’d like some passionate love before he gets the companionate love. But then…passionate love burned him pretty badly once.

Ray Kowalski’s been married. He’s been through the stages: head over heels, solid partnership, drifting apart. He doesn’t want to go through that last part again. But he’s enough of an optimist to believe that, with that right person and the lessons he’s learned, he can get to solid partnership and stay there, without the whole drifting apart thing.

Much to their mutual surprise, Benton Fraser and Ray Kowalski found that kind of love. The head over heels kind and the solid partnership kind, both more or less at the same time and with the same person. For Benton Fraser, it was Ray Kowalski. For Ray Kowalski, it was Benton Fraser.

And they wanted to make it real: to each other (which it already was) and to the rest of the world, which it couldn’t be. Ray tried to pretend like it didn’t matter that he couldn’t marry Fraser. Fraser was pragmatic, pointing out that they were “as good as” married.

As good as wasn’t good enough for Ray. And he was pretty sure it wasn’t for Fraser either. He knew by the way they’d be out, eating chili dogs and letting Dief run rampant in the park. They’d see an older couple, walking hand in hand with matching wedding bands. And Fraser would sigh, just a little, before deliberately looking the other way, looking for Dief.

They think about different approaches. They know same-sex and opposite-sex-but-one-is-transgendered couples who have extra-legal weddings, with liberal clergy and finger foods and cake. Who sign complicated legal documents, living wills, medical directives, insurance policies. They themselves fill out their forms, tell everyone they’re together, but don’t have a ceremony. It just doesn’t seem right to them, not unless it’s recognized by the state. Ray doesn’t know why it bothers him so much, this need to get married again in a way no one can deny, just that it does. He’d ask Fraser to say it for him, to find the words, because Fraser’s a champ at explaining shit like this, but he knows that Fraser shares his hard, unreasonable need, and that putting into words would just hurt them both.

Once, they tried shopping for rings, but that also hurt them both, knowing that no matter how much they loved each other, will always love each other, the rings are just jewelry. They went home and argued bitterly about it, each trying to convince the other that a piece of paper from the state wouldn’t make the rings, their commitment, any more meaningful. Maybe even someone cried a little, since they were both making the same arguments that neither found convincing. 

Other times, they console each other, knowing that at least they have each other while waiting on forgiveness, acceptance from society, from the law, to fix its broken places, the places where a man and a woman are welcome but two men or two women are not. “It’ll happen,” they tell each other, not always sounding very convincing. “Not so many twists and crooked lines to get what _they _have.”__

And that’s just one more thing Ray hates: that his straight friends have become “them.” That his parents, for fuck’s sake, are “them.” The lucky ones, the ones let inside. Hell, Ray himself had been one of “them,” taking it for granted that he could wear a ring that matched someone else’s ring, and that meant he was a husband with a wife. Now he wants nothing more than to be a husband with a husband, but nobody cares. They’re outside, looking in.

“It’s a hungry place,” Fraser says wistfully of their own lack of standing, of recognition, while they watch Eloise and Davie get married. Eloise and Davie invited them as a pair, both taking a dance with each of them, but when he takes a turn around the dance floor with Fraser, Ray mutters bitterly, “It’s almost like we’re a real couple."

“We are a real couple,” Fraser says, but half-heartedly. And Ray certainly doesn’t want to argue with him at this happy occasion, considering that they both basically agree anyway. But afterward, he drops Fraser at home and drives around aimlessly, looking at houses owned by couples who applied for a mortgage as a family, who check off boxes like “married, filing jointly” every year, who, if one of them happens to be a foreign national, aren’t going to have Immigration telling them they aren’t really married.

Ray eventually drives home again, and Fraser welcomes him without a word, holds him, makes love to him tenderly, and they fall asleep, as together as they can be.

They’ve been together for years, in Chicago, visiting Canada often, when one hot summer day Fraser grins at Ray and asks him how soon he can take a week off. Ray’s learned to roll with some things, and a Fraser this happy is one of them. He gets the time off as quickly as he can, and they pack up the car and drive northwest for days until they get to Montana. Until they get to Glacier National Park. Until they get to International Peace Park.

Ray looks around. It’s beautiful, but it’s not really Fraser’s part of Canada. It’s not even the closest part of Canada they could’ve gotten to from Chicago. But Fraser looks downright ecstatic as he turns to Ray. 

“Two weeks ago, on July 20th, it was the sixty-first anniversary of an attempt to kill Hitler,” Fraser says. Ray knows that attempt failed, so he doesn’t get why it’s making Fraser so happy. Except that someone, you know, _tried _to stop him no matter what the cost to themselves.__

“And the thirty-sixth anniversary of the first time a human being walked on the moon,” Fraser says, and Ray remembers watching that on TV and how happy it made him, and he starts to smile.

“And this year, it was the day that Canada became the first, and so far only, country in the Americas to legalize same-sex marriage nationally,” Fraser concludes, pulling a small jewelry box from his backpack. And before he pops it open to reveal the matching bands, before he can say anything else, Ray gets it, is just as a happy as Fraser has been for two weeks, and doesn’t care if anyone sees him cry.

“We’re on the borderline, outside looking in,” he vaguely hears Fraser saying, gesturing northward. “But we’ve finally been invited in.”


End file.
